HEREDITARY FRIENDS
'Curtain', 'Concert'. And then you will be lost, for
the operator will say: 1 don't know Concert/ and if
you ask what the name of the Nth Division is, will
repeat inflexibly, inevitably, 'I don't know/
But when, with miraculous patience, you have at
length discovered the unit you are looking for, you
will find that the atmosphere is just what it was
before. The colonel, a good soldier, serious and a
little frigid: his adjutant-major, submerged beneath
brigade and divisional documents: the sporting
padre who plays cricket for his county: the inter-
preter who now calls himself a liaison officer, the
only Frenchman in the regiment and for that reason
treated as a precious article, at once admired and
chaffed, whose job it is to replenish the kitchen,
stimulate conversation, and run the radio: and then
'Madame', who is the proprietress of the house, be
it estaminet, farm, or chateau, in which the mess has
been installed.
'Madame is most generous. . . . She doesn't wait
to be asked, she just offers. . . . She thinks of every-
thing. . * . She has helped our cook with the
dinner. . . * Our own mothers couldn't look after us
better. . . / Such were the eulogies I heard on all
sides. Everything seems easier than in 1914. There
was then, in the beginning, a faint mutual distrust.
The Englishman had a feeling that he was there to
defend France and everything was his right: the
Frenchman was a little surprised to find him there.